[Michael Cantor]

It's becoming a bit of a Chinese menu, but it's also continuing to improve - and it was good from the start. I like Draft Three the most, but would replace "besties" (girl talk) with "best friends" (mother talk - and it also reads better).

[Julie Steiner]

Thanks for continuing to care about this, Matt, Lexa, Roger, and Michael.

I've tweaked "besties" to "best friends" in L2, and have stuck a third, hesitant "might" into L8, while changing the kid's name again. (Matt, your name forms a convenient off-rhyme with "might," and is even more popular among conservative Christian families than Paul, so I've stolen it.)

Roger, my process may be frustrating to witness, but my first several revisions are always worse than the original. My spirit animal is Gustave Flaubert, a notoriously slow, indecisive, meticulous fusser.

I do have a bad habit of giving more weight to negative comments than positive ones, which is unfair to the positive critters, but when two insightful people complain about the same thing, I get nervous.

Matt and Lexa, just a little context: Since we homeschooled our two kids until high school (mainly because we were in the hospital so much), they collected more than the usual share of extremely conservative friends whose parents were sheltering them from the evils of liberalism in the schools.

This particular kid's dad was actually a licensed psychologist who worked for the police department—a deeply "law and order" guy. He was of the loud opinion that since God is perfectly just, nothing bad ever happens to good people. So anyone with anxiety disorders, etc., deserves them, as divine punishment, and God will never heal them without their abject contrition and acceptance of personal responsibility for whatever it was they must have done to have made God inflict childhood sexual abuse on them, etc.— even if they can't remember what childhood sin of theirs had invited that punishment in the first place.

He was a great proponent of every father's God-given role as absolute head of the household, "spare the rod and spoil the child," etc., and was fond of judging modern parents for destroying society by being too soft, womanlike, and permissive; his own kids would never dare do...whatever; blah blah blah.

So he was exactly the kind of jerk likely to throw his son out on the street for not being his own hypermasculine Mini Me. And his son would no doubt have been thrown into a panic of homophobic denial if I had ever suggested that anyone thought he might be gay.

None of that belongs in the poem, but that's the world I'm coming from.

[Alexandra Baez]

Julie, I'm still curious about this:

I'm not sure I see the consistency between these two statements:

and

Do you mean that the n trying to disguise her social-activist motives within a conservative more? If so, I think there’s ironic tension there.Do you mean that the n is trying to disguise her social-activist motives within a conservative more? If so, I think there’s ironic tension there.

and this:

The truth barometer is, if this poem reflects an actual incident, how did these teens really react [to being brought food]?

[David Callin]

Hi Julie. I'm in with the "It's done" crowd, except that I have (probably unreasonable) doubts about L10. It does get your message across, but I think it is - compared to the rest - a weak line in itself. Would you have used that line at all, if it weren't for the exigencies of rhyme? Personally, I doubt it, but you will know better than me.

It still seems pretty much done. I just have that slight misgiving.

Cheers

David

[Matt Q]

My daughter and her best friends cheer.

So her less-than-best friends remain silent? I'm trying to think of a situation in which I'd say something like, "my son is in his room with his best friends" rather than "my son is in his room with his friends" -- unless perhaps something terrible had happened to him and I wanted to emphasise that those closest to him were there to offer comfort. OK, probably I'm over-objecting. It could be to convey that the friends with her were her closest friends, not just any group of friends -- though why that make much difference, I'm not sure.

I think that "friends" is probably the right word in this context, but the metre requires another syllable. Hence "buddies", "besties", "best friends" etc. Of the three, I think "besties" is best option, but tonally it's maybe still a little at odds with the voice of the rest of the poem. (I guess you could have "my daughter and her friends all cheer"). I guess you could have "my daughter and her school friends" (even if, in reality they didn't go to school), which tells us something about the age-group, that they're school-age.

Your explanation of the boy's father helps me see what "your father's discipline's severe" might mean, but I still think the line is unclear by itself. I reckon there might be a better way of getting some of that across, hinting at the religious element maybe. You also have "queer" as a possible rhyme here, I guess.

Matt

[Julie Steiner]

Yay, critiques! No, seriously, I appreciate them. Thanks for continuing to care about this poem.

Fourth (and final, I hope!) draft posted above.

David, I assume you were uneasy about L9 rather than L10? That's the line that several others thought was a bit too stilted, and that's the one I've tweaked above (rather than L10).

Lexa, the poem I want to write is first and foremost about not being able to do much to help a kid who might be in real peril of sudden homelessness. I don't want to distract from that goal, and I think trying to scoring snark-points against conservative parents—who often take pride in their culture of Southern hospitality and "family values"—would overwhelm the vibe of pusillanimous concern in such a short poem. If some readers feel hint of irony or judgment in the title "Hospitality," fantastic. But I'm not disappointed if other readers don't pick up on that, and I don't want to do anything obvious to underscore it to make sure that they do.

To me, my passivity about that overtly communicating that irony in the poem does not seem inconsistent with my having said that it was part of the reason I wanted to keep "Hospitality" as the title. Clearly you feel that it IS inconsistent, and that I'm missing an opportunity to bring another level to the poem. So be it.

I am also a lot less interested in establishing the precise sequence of events than you and Matt are, but here's what I was picturing. As the poem begins, the kids have already said thank you for the food that the narrator has brought. The narrator responds to their thanks in L1, then immediately withdraws so as not to intrude upon their peer-to-peer interactions. As they serve themselves from the tray, the kids continue to express their eager anticipation, probably to show the daughter that they are appreciative, in a "Yay, munchies" sort of way. The absent narrator continues to privately worry about the home situation of one of the kids, and how little she can do to offer help without upsetting him with the fact that she (rightly or wrongly) thinks he's gay.

That sequence is apparently unclear in the poem, but I'm okay with a bit of confusion there.

Matt, I hope "my daughter and her nerd-tribe cheer" in the revised L2 eliminates the meter's overemphasis on the "best" in "best friends." Some readers might now think that the daughter's "nerd-tribe" are the daughter's children rather than her friends, but even if they do, I think the scenario still works that way.

Thanks again.

[Michael Cantor]

I like the changes except for nerd-tribe, which (a) sounds too much like Mom, trying to be with it, and (b) doesn't seem to flow as smoothly, and brings a teeny interruption into the reading. I prefer "best friends" or (Matt's suggestion - "school friends".

[Julie Steiner]

I wanted "my daughter's tribe of misfits cheer." It would chime nicely with "I never miss" in the next line. But I wasn't sure that giving the singular but collective noun "tribe" the plural verb "cheer" (as Brits do, instead of the singular verb "cheers") works in American English, or if it will just look like the annoyingly common error of matching the verb number to the plural object of the preposition immediately before it ("misfits"), instead of matching the verb number to the actual subject ("tribe").

Maybe I'm overthinking that.

[Alexandra Baez]

I wanted "my daughter's tribe of misfits cheer." It would chime nicely with "I never miss" in the next line. But I wasn't sure that giving the singular but collective noun "tribe" the plural verb "cheer" (as Brits do, instead of the singular verb "cheers") works in American English, or if it will just look like the annoyingly common error of matching the verb number to the plural object of the preposition immediately before it ("misfits"), instead of matching the verb number to the actual subject ("tribe").

Julie, you can justifiably invoke the principle of notional agreement in this case: https://www.merriam-webster.com/gram...iple-proximity . I rather like a slant like "nerd-tribe" or "misfits"--the specificity adds color and believability while bolstering the last stanza's revelation by foreshadowing it. The simplicity and directness of the new third to last line is also really nice. On a technical note, I like how it sidesteps the awkwardness of the prior version's two successive apostrophe s's.